Once a week, I'm going to do a short piece of rpg writing inspired by a magic the gathering card. I'm hoping the low stakes and leisurely pace will keep me from burning out on it.
This week my card is Time Spiral! I've turned it into a GLOG spell, which is cast by rolling a variable number of D6 Magic Dice (MD). If you want to learn the details of how GLOG spellcasting works I'd check out this excellent article.
This is a pretty dangerous spell to let run wild. I certainly wouldn't put it on the spell list for a wizard school. I think it would work well as a treasure spell, perhaps attached to a scroll that self-destructs back in time when used.
Time Spiral
Range, duration, target: n/a
Revert time to the start of the session, but you lose all magic dice except the ones you spent on this spell that didn't get exhausted. You and your party keep their memories.
Spell-specific mishaps!
If you roll doubles, the spell fails, and you roll on a D6 table for a mishap. Most spellcasting classes have their own mishap tables, but I like to have a couple spell-specific options. Put these at the end of the table, and roll a D8, or just replace your two least favorite mishaps:
- You lose all magic dice except the ones you spent on this spell that didn't get exhausted.
- Revert only your character to the state they were in at the start of the session. They don't keep any new memories.
Additional notes
I wouldn't muck about with timelines or paradoxes or stable loops. Just everything that happened in the session is undone, never happened outside of the PC's memories. Some especially magical beings might be able to remember... If the wizard uses this to retry every boss fight that goes wrong, imagine if the lich or dragon or whatever also gets all that extra time to prepare, or even to proactively hunt down the party this time around!
